Now a month or two goes by, and the bad guys move to phase two: Taking advantage of their mark's laziness and complacency to begin installing virii/trojans/whatnot on their visitor's machines. What had been a server-side vulnerability just became the end-user's nightmare.

Thanks.

Then as a web surfer, it's not much different than visiting a deliberately malicious web site. In one case, the Bad Guys really are the web masters. In the other case, lazy web masters have effectively lost control of their web site to the Bad Guys. In either case, to cause me problems the Bad Guys have to take advantage of some weakness in my web browser. So I'm depending on some combination of my web browser, an anti-malware program, and my wits to defend me against the Bad Guys.

That would be a bit different from Java (where this all started). To defend against attacks coming through Java, I still can use an anti-malware program and my wits, but my web browser no longer is any help nor is it the source of the vulnerability. But I can completely eliminate the threat by simply refusing to install Java and accepting the loss of functionality Java provided.

When Life Gives You Lemons
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